Pretoria - A Pretoria family have discovered a family treasure among their late mother’s belongings, a one-of-a-kind pocket watch that has taken them on a journey back in time.

The relic was the engraved pocket watch of the first editor and founder of the Pretoria News, Leo Weinthal.

The pocket watch, according to the family, is an eight-day manual winder, that although not working, remained in mint condition.

“We don’t have much information as we found it among my mother's possessions after her death. We think it might have been connected to where she worked in the 1930s and during World War II, as she worked for the Jewish publisher, Victor Gollancz, in London,” the family said.

The engraved pocket watch of the first editor and founder of the Pretoria News, Leo Weinthal. Picture: Supplied

The family have no connection to the Weinthal family, and are willing to hand it to his relatives, should they be interested.

Weinthal was a South African journalist, writer, entrepreneur and the founder of the Pretoria News. He was born in Graaf-Reinet in1865, and studied in Hamburg, Germany and the Grey Institute in Port Elizabeth as a photographer.

In 1887, he moved to the then Transvaal and joined the Department of the Land Surveyor–General in Pretoria as a state lithographer. However, he was more interested in journalism and in 1888 became the principal agent of Reuters in the Transvaal, a position he held up to 1897.

He also represented The Times and the Daily Telegraph in London.

Upon the resignation of the editor of The Press in 1891, Weinthal took up the position as its editor, and as a result, the newspaper began supporting the government of Paul Kruger.

In June 1898, Weinthal started the midday paper, the Pretoria News, which still exists today.

With the outbreak of the Anglo Boer War in 1899, he served as a special war correspondent for American newspapers. His most distinctive work was compiling an encyclopaedic publication in a number of volumes, The Story of the Cape to Cairo Railway and the River Route from 1887 to 1922 and 1922 to 1924.

He also wrote a biography of Joseph Benjamin Robinson, titled Memories, Mines and Millions, in 1929.

He died in London in 1930.

Pretoria News